Education in Great Britain

&8212&8212&8212&8212&8212&8212&8212&8212&8212&8212&8212&8212&8212&8212&8212&8212- EDUCATION IN GREAT BRITAIN 6/7. all-encompassing Britain does non meet a written constitution, so there argon no constitutional provisions for facts of life. The scheme of commandment is determined by the National cultivation Acts. Schools in England ar support from in the public eye(predicate) cash in hand paid to the local education authorities. These local education authorities argon responsible for organizing the crophouses in their beas and they themselves choose how to do it.Lets outline the staple fibre owns of public education inBritain. branchly, there be wide variations surrounded by 1 part of the country and an new(prenominal). For to the highest degree educational purposes England and Wales are tough as wiz unit, though the organisation in Wales is a forgetful contrary from that ofEngland. Scotland andnortherly Ireland gain their own education administrations. Secondly, education in Britain mirrors the countrys social system it is class-divided and selective. The commencement ceremony division is amongst those who pay and those who do not pay.The bulk of initiates in Britain are supported by public funds and the education provided is issue. They are chief(prenominal)tained schools, scarcely there is also a considerable number of public schools. Parents have to pay fees to send their children to these schools. The fees are high. As a matter of fact, precisely very rich families behind send their children to public schools as healthy as to the best universities, such(prenominal) as Oxford andCambridge. An most opposite important feature of breeding in Britain is a variety of opportunities offered to schoolchildren.The English school governmental program is divided into Arts (or Humanities) and Sciences, which determine the division of the collateral school pupils into psychoanalyse groups a Science pupil will study Chemist ry, Physics, Mathematics (Maths), Economics, technical Drawing, Biology, Geography an Art pupil will do the English dustup and Literature, History, foreign languages, Music, Art, Drama. Besides these subjects they must do round general education subjects like Physical fostering (PE), Home Economics for girls, and Technical subjects for boys, superior general Science.Computers play an important part in education. there is a system of careers education for schoolchildren inBritain. It is a leash-year course. The system of option exists in only kinds of secondary schools. Besides, the structure of the curriculum and the organization of t apieceing vary from school to school. Headmasters and headmistresses of schools are given a great deal of freedom in deciding what is taught and how in their schools so that there is re all(prenominal)(prenominal)y no of import control at separately over individual schools.The National Education Act of 1944 provided three stages of educatio n primary, secondary and further education. Compulsory schooling in England and Wales last-places 11 historic period, from the age of 5 to 16. After the age of 16 a growing number of school students are staying on at school, any(prenominal) until 18 or 19, the age of entry into higher education in universities and Polytechnics. British university courses are rather short, gener separately(prenominal)y lasting for 3 years.The cost of education depends on the college and speciality which one chooses. Pre-primary and Primary Education Nurseries. Primary School. Streaming. The Eleven positivistic Examination. No more(prenominal)(prenominal) of It? In some areas of England there are nursery schools3 for children nether 5 years of age. Some children between two and five become education in nursery classes or in infants classes in primary schools. Many children wait on informal pre-school play-groups make by parents in private homes.Nursery schools are staffed with teachers and students in training. There are all kinds of toys to keep the children busy from 9 o time in the morning till 4 oclock in the afternoon spell their parents are at work. Here the babies play, dejeuner and sleep. They can run more or less(prenominal) and play in safety with person keeping an eye on them. For day nurseries which remain open all the year round (he parents pay according to their income. The local education situations nurseries are free.But only about three children in carbon can go to them there arent enough places, and the waiting lists are rather long. close to children start school at 5 in a primary school. A primary school whitethorn be divided into two parts -infants and juniors. At infants school immortaliseing, writing and arithmetic are taught for about 20 minutes a day during the first year, gradually increasing to about 2 hours in their last year. There is usually no written timetable. Much time is spent in modelling from clay or drawing, reading or singing.By the time children are ready for the junior school they will be able to read and write, do simple addition and subtraction of numbers. At 7 children go on from the infants school to the junior school. This marks the transition from play to factual work. The children have set periods of arithmetic, reading and composition which are all Eleven Plus subjects. History, Geography, Nature Study, Art and Music, Physical Education, Swimming are also on the timetable. Pupils are streamed according to their abilities to learn into A, B, ? and D streams.The least gifted are in the D stream. Formally towards the end of their quartern year the pupils wrote their Eleven Plus Examination. The hated 11 + examination was a selective procedure on which not only the pupils future schooling just their future careers depended. The abolition of selection at Eleven Plus Examination brought to life comprehensive schools where pupils can get secondary education. alternate Education Comprehensiv e Schools. Grammar Schools. Secondary Modern Schools. The Sixth Form. No some(prenominal) Inequality?.Cuts on School Spending After the age of 11, just about children go to comprehensive schools of which the majority are for both boys and girls. About 90 per cent of all state-financed secondary schools are of this type. more or less other children receive secondary education in grammar and secondary modern schools. Comprehensive schools were introduced in 1965. The idea of comprehensive education, supported by the take Party, was to give all children of whatever background the same opportunity in education.Only about 20 per cent of children study for the General Certificate of Education, Ordinary Level (GCE ?-level). nigh children do not pass GCE examinations. They leave school at 16 without any real qualification and more often than not emergence the ranks of unemployed bulk. Pupils of modern schools get to their Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) examinations while in grammar schools almost all children stay to sixteen to take ?-levels. More than half of them stay on to take ?-levels.Some comprehensive and umteen secondary schools, however, do not have enough academic courses for one-sixth-formers. Pupils can reassign either to a grammar school or to a sixth-form college to get the courses they want. The majority of schools inScotland are six-year comprehensives. Secondary education in Northern Ireland is organized along selective lines according to childrens abilities. One can just say that high quality secondary education is provided for all inBritain.There is a high loss of pupils from working-class families at entry into the sixth form. If you are a working-class child at school today, the run a risk of your reaching the second year of a sixth- form course is believably less than one-twelfth of that for the child of a professional parent. Besides, government cuts on school spending caused many unenviableies. Secondary School Examinati ons Time for Examinations. GCE. CSE. The Sixth Forms. CEE.GCSE Pupils at secondary schools in England (that is, pupils between the ages of twelve and eighteen) have two main exams to worry about, both called GCE General Certificate of Education. They take the first one when they are about fifteen. Its called O- level. There is an exam which you can take instead of ?-level it is called the CSE (Certificate of Secondary Education), and it is not as difficult as O-level. Most pupils take ?-level in about seven or eight different subjects.There are isthmuss of subjects to choose from all(prenominal)thing from carpentry to ancient languages. For a lot of jobs, such as nursing, or assistant librarian, you must have quatern or five ?-levels, and usually these must include English and Maths. You may leave school when you are 16. But if you stay at school after taking ?-level, you go into the sixth form. The sixth forms and sixth-form colleges offer a wide range of courses. Ordinary leve l alternative, CEE (Certificate of ExtendedEducation) and CSE courses are offered to pupils who need qualifications at a lower level. But if you have made up your headland to gain entry to a university, Polytechnic or college of further education you have to start working for the second main examination A-level. Most people take ?-level when they are about eighteen. It is quite a difficult exam, so people dont usually take it in more than 3 subjects and some only in one or two subjects. Three ?-levels are enough to get you in to most universities.For others, such as Oxford andCambridge, you have to take special exams as well. A new school-leaving certificate is planned, however, and O-level and CSE will be replaced by one public exam, the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). It is to show how children worked throughout 5 years of secondary school. 5. parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom should be seen as a referendum on the performance of sitting mononuclear phagocyte system, not still as a snapshot nationwide opinion poll ascertain caller voting weights for the next sevens.The electoral system affects the degree to which voters may hold their fight downatives to account for their actions in the previous Parliament changes which would diminish this function mechanism should be resisted. The UK presently has a legislature whose unelected chamber go against reflects the relative strength of the crunch, buttoned-up, Liberal populist and None of the Above parties. Conversely, if jade and the Conservatives each won 50% of the vote, the other chamber would have a sizable Labour majority. 51% of the seats in the Lower hold delivers 100% of the power, and this can be captured by Labour on about 40% of the vote.Nevertheless, whenever Labour runs into opposition from the chamber which, in any other context, would be described as more representative by people who go in for that kind of thing, it threatens to force its legislation throu gh under the Parliament Acts, on the grounds that the Lower House is more democratic. The Lower Houseismore democratic. Contrary to the self-serving views of the Liberal Democrats and other jejune supporters of electoral straighten, what matters for democracy is not representativeness or proportionality, so much as accountability and responsiveness.When MPs behave in pact with their constituents wishes, this is to be preferred to their merely existing in troupe groupings of such sizes as best reflect their constituents choices at the previous election. When discussing electoral reform in the UK, retaining a constituency link is often posited as a requirement. That is to say, it is matt-up to be necessary that allone should have an MP who is in some reek theirs, normally meaning that people are grouped into geographical areas and each area gets its own MP. A weaker version of this permits multiple MPs for each area.This is supposed to be good because it means that theres automa tically someone in Parliament to go to with ones grievances. There is a much better understanding why it happens to be good. If we merely say that everyone must have one or a small number of MPs, that does not imply that every MP must have his own constituency. The German federal electoral system and its antipodean imitator in New Zealand affords MPs who have no constituencies they are elected from party lists and assigned in such numbers as ensure that the proportion of MPs in each party in the chamber match the proportion of the vote each party won.This category of MPs shares the same vice as MPs in a chamber fully elected by a proportional system they cant be voted out of office directly. If your MP decides to go against the wishes of his constituents, they can contact him and say, Hi, your majority at the last election was 2000 we, the undersigned 1001 who voted for you last time will vote against your party next time unless you down the whip on this issue we care about. The easier it is to do this, the more apparent the behaviour of an MP will reflect the wishes of constituents.Dont believe the canard about votes not counting every vote against the person who won counts against his majority and makes him more susceptible to pressure from his constituents before the next election. The electoral system can restrain this tactic. It works well under First Past The Post, and uniform systems. Generally, increasing the number of MPs who represent a single constituency has the kernel of making this tactic harder, as the punishment from electors may be mete out crossways several MPs, especially if the electors cannot choose which MPs from a paricular party get the benefit of their vote.This is a notorious problem with the European Parliamentary elections in Great Britain if some MEP is the ringleader for a particularly odious policy, she cannot substantially be voted out without voting out the colleagues from her party. Even when a free choice on the pref erential ordering of MPs is permitted, it is difficult to impediment the disliked MP from riding back to election on the coattails of his more popular colleagues. So, in order of preferability, the electoral systems rank as follows * First Past The Post, and Alternative Vote Single Transferable Vote in multimember constituencies * Proper Proportional original systems with open lists * Proper Proportional Representation systems with closed lists Having said all this, it must be stressed that electoral reform for the House of parking area should not be considered in closing off from the composition of the other chamber, and the relation between the Commons and three other institutions the executive, the House of lords, and the courts.Some notes Alternative Vote is the Australian name for a system which when used in single-member constituencies is identical to STV electors rank the candidates in order of preference, and the least popular candidate is repeatedly eliminated until some one has over 50% essentially, formerly a candidate is eliminated, a vote is regarded as counting for whichever be candidate was most preferred by its caster.The effect of this system tends to be obliteration of extremists without penalising or wasting protest votes. It should be noted that in the British debate, Proportional Representation is used to mean proper PR systemsandSTV/AV. The Australian Electoral Commissionusedto have an excellent webpage with a classification of all the electoral systems used in Australias twenty-odd legislative chambers, but theyve apparently improved it off their site now.Other fallacious views on electoral systems which it is useful to rebut at this juncture include the contention that FPTP entrenches a two-party system (in fact, the number of parties is contingent on the geographical slow-wittedness of voters), that AV in the UK in 1997 would have led to a bigger Labour majority (only if you didnt tell people and the parties what the electoral sys tem was in advance, otherwise the parties would have behaved differently), and that geographical constituencies are a relic of a bygone age and are being replaced by PR across Europe, or at least the world.FPTP is described by Hilaire Barnett in her militantly Anglosceptic tome on the British constitution as still existing in some dusty English-speaking corners of the planet in fact some countries exploitation PR have been moving towards constituencies Italy did in the 1990s, and the Dutch are considering a similar move. 2. POLITICAL PARTIESThe idea of policy-making parties first took form in Britain and the Conservative Party claims to be the oldest political party in the world. governmental parties began to form during the English civil wars of the 1640s and 1650s. First, there were Royalists and Parliamentarians then Tories and Whigs. Whereas the Whigs wanted to limit the power of the monarch, the Tories today the Conservatives were seen as the patriotic party.Today there a re three major political parties in the British system of politics * The Labour Party the centre-Left party currently led by Ed Miliband * The Conservative Party (frequently called the Tories) the centre-Right party currently led by David Cameron * The Liberal Democrat Party (known as the Lib Dems) the centrist, libertarian party currently led by chip off Clegg In addition to these three main parties, there are some much small UK parties (notably the UK Independence Party and the Green Party) and some parties which operate specifically in Scotland (the Scottish National Party), Wales (Plaid Cymru) or Northern Ireland (such as Sinn Fein for the nationalists and the Democratic marrowist Party for the loyalists). Each political party chooses its leader in a different way, but all include all the Members of Parliament of the party and all the individual members of that party.By convention, the leader of the political party with the largest number of members in the House of Common s becomes the Prime Minster (formally at the invitation of the Queen). Political parties are an all-important feature of the British political system because * The three main political parties in the UK have existed for a atomic number 6 or more and have a strong and stable cross out image. * It is virtually impossible for someone to be elected to the House of Commons without being a member of an established political party. * All political parties strongly whip their elected members which means that, on the vast majority of issues, Members of Parliament of the same party vote as a block. Having said this, the settle of the hree main political parties is not as dominant as it was in the 1940s and 1950s because * The three parties have smaller memberships than they did since voters are much less inclined to join a political party. * The three parties ensure a lower overall percentage of the total vote since smaller parties between them now take a growing share of the vote. * Vote rs are much less tribal, supporting the same party at every election, and much more likely to float, voting for different parties at sequential elections. * The ideological differences between the parties are less than they were with the parties adopting more pragmatic positions on many issues. In the past, class was a major determinant of voting figure in British politics, with most working class electors voting Labour and most middle class electors voting Conservative.These days, class is much less important because * Working class numbers have shrunk and now represent only 43% of the electorate. * Except at the extremes of wealth, lifestyles are more similar. * cast does not determine voting intention so much as values, trust and competence. In the British political system, there is a broad consensus between the major parties on * the rule of law * the free securities industry economy * the national health service * UK membership of European Union and NATO The main difference s between the political parties concern * how to tackle poverty and inconsistency * the levels and forms of taxation * the extent of state intervention in the economy * the counterpoise between collective rights and individual rights